Most blood donors are do-gooders at heart, and many marketing teams and recruitment directors are appealing to that part of their nature by gifting them with Eco-friendly products like our recyclable shopping tote. Donors leave the blood center or mobile drive after a donation not only feeling good about donating blood but also armed with a way to continue making a difference.

These imprinted shopping totes are also a highly-visible way to showcase your center’s logo. The totes literally become walking billboards as donors carry them beyond the home or office, taking the Recycle Life message with them.

As you consider how to thank your donors for giving the gift of life, consider this proven product from Omnisource and let them carry away a gift that both of you can feel good about!

As minority populations continue to grow, there is an increased need for both African American and Hispanic American blood donors. Answering the call to recruit and retain these donors is often challenging—even for the largest blood centers.  For smaller blood centers, the challenge is greater still.

Our Blood Matters™ is a simple, turnkey solution for Minority Donor Marketing. It offers the marketing tools you need, in a prepackaged campaign. And it comes with the recruitment expertise from me.  I have an extensive background in minority recruitment, I know your plight and I’m here to help.

For more information, visit OurBloodMatters.com.

Planning campaigns and promotional events on an annual basis will ensure successful recruitment activities.  Gifts and promotional materials will be on hand and budget will be timely and maximized.When planning for the upcoming year, we would review the effectiveness of past campaigns, research ideas on Donorgifts.com and The Blood Blog.

Keeping a list of ideas and promotions from colleagues will be a handy reference.  Each campaign must be given enough notice for proper marketing and donor anticipation. Advance planning and a schedule for executing the promotional campaign is essential to outstanding results.

Tara and I recently presented some cool data at the annual meeting of the California Blood Bank Society.

At the average 100 unit blood drive, 12 to 16 donors will be temporarily deferred. Of temporary deferrals, 60-70% are for one reason–low iron. And most of those donors are women in their child-bearing years.

We asked blood center executives and medical directors a pointed question–how many of those donors will return, to try again within the next two months?

Not a single attendee could even guess at an answer to that question!

Or next query was most telling. We asked each CBBS attendee to describe the process their blood center employs to coach temporarily deferred donors back into the blood program, on terms which ensure they’ll qualify.

That query only ended in blank stares and scratched heads! Not a single blood center executive or medical director could relate an established, detailed process!

Which begs the question–which major manufacturer would be satisfied with preventable productivity leakage of 12 to 16%? And what for-profit manufacturer wouldn’t have a plan in place to recapture these “lost resources” once they were again eligible to qualify?

With the right coaching, most temporarily deferred donors will give again. According to our pilot programs and research, however, the unintended last message temporary deferrals at busy blood drives feel they most often receive from your staff are the Three Unacceptable Un-words–deferred donors leave feeling not only Unhealthy and Unqualified, but also Unwanted!

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As you may know, our parent company also works with Pepsi.

Just yesterday, I spent the morning in Cuppy, the Pepsi Cup Costume, at a Pepsi Beverages Company call center. Cuppy met over 400 Pepsi employees!

We experienced the same thing we’ve experienced when we have taken blood drop costumes to community events and high school blood drives–social media savvy fans often want a cell-phone photo snapped of them with an inflatable mascot!

That’s why we recommend having a Facebook fan page for your blood center mascot! When Pepsi mascots make public appearances, their handlers often hand out collateral items that say–ADD FIZZY ON FACEBOOK – www.SodaGear.com/fizzy

If someone captured a picture to show their family, would you be OK with that? If someone told their friends about what an awesome time they had at your blood drive, would you be OK with that? If a child remembered his/her parents donating blood because something stood out to them , would you be OK with that?

If your answers are yes, then mascots will do all three things and so much more! It’s proven time and time again, that with mascots at your blood drive, rather it be our seated inflatable, our sky high mascot or our costume mascot, that people remember and talk about the fun they had while donating. They might post the picture to Facebook, they might send the picture to their spouse to show the kids or they might just take a picture because they want to remember the experience.

Mascots have been in the business a long time as you know, but some remember their mascots as hot, bulky, dirty or just plain old! Our inflatable mascots are easy to use, great for hot summer days, and they don’t take up an entire corner in your office when you store them. We have sold a lot of mascots, but we have given away even more FREE mascots. The way to get your next mascot FREE is easy. You are buying t-shirts, stress balls, water bottles, or whatever your chosen donor incentive is anyways, why not try to plan ahead and buy in bulk to receive a FREE mascot? It’s just that simple. Try our standard blood drop, or learn how we can help you design a new mascot for your blood center!